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by ivyfic



Category: The Shadow, movie-verse - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-08-30
Updated: 2004-08-30
Packaged: 2017-10-16 21:09:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/169375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyfic/pseuds/ivyfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lamont comes home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to veryschway for the beta! When she has the time, she's a fantastic editor.

***  
Outside the gates of Paradise, I sat and wept, bewailing my sin.  
I tried to steal what was a gift.  
O Blessed Paradise, pray for me. With the rustling of your leaves.  
 _The Veil of the Temple_ , John Tavener

***

He approached the mansion keeping close to the stone wall that surrounded it, his eyes forward, not wanting to see even the roof above the barrier. Now that he had come so close, he wanted desperately to turn away. In China he had feared neither death nor pain. Strange that he should now be terrified of his own home.

Lamont removed his leather glove and brushed his finger against the rough-hewn stone. Pedestrians brushed past him unheeding. This was New York, after all, where you were taught from childhood to ignore the pain of others and keep walking.

He forced his footsteps forward, one after another, approaching the iron grillwork of the gate. He kept his eyes focused on his hand as his fingers trailed from grey stone to black metal, twining fingers in the curlicues he had climbed as a child. He paused and gathered what little strength he had, and then raised his eyes.

He didn’t know what he had expected, but it wasn’t this. No, not this. Every shutter and shingle, each stone in the driveway and blade of grass on the lawn, the windows, the lintel, the brass knocker, each were exactly as he remembered. For seven years he had pushed his past down, burying it in ice, numbing himself to his own identity. And now here it was, the same as it always had been. Seeing his home – home, he had thought he had none – ached like a frozen limb regaining life.

To survive in the war, he had tried to forget this. He saw the carnage around him and the monster he was becoming and believed that there could not be any happiness or safety left in the world. Later he half-believed he was a demon-child, born of Satan directly into the guise of Yin-ko, the Butcher. And when he dreamt at night of safety and warmth, of his mother’s embrace and his father’s smile, he woke as if from a nightmare to find himself covered in his own filth, cold and alone despite his stolen luxury. On those terrible nights he found his pipe and his opium and returned again to the stupor where he could believe that this was the only way he could live.

How could he still have a home? Lamont’s hands rested limply on the gate, his blurring gaze unable to turn away. How could God allow him to be a monster? How could he have fallen so far? Why did he choose to live in death when there was life? Why was he cast into darkness, forced to look across a chasm at the light that once shone in his life?

The agony was unbearable. His throat closed and his heart felt too large for his chest. Lamont knew now what he had tried to forget. He was raised in love; he had been happy. And he had chosen to throw it away. He felt, standing at the threshold, as Adam must have looking back through the gates of Paradise.

But Lamont could not weep, and could not move, transfixed by his pain. He had changed. _Only_ he had changed, and the rest of the world remained the same.

***

Police Commissioner Wainwright took a quick swig from his flask as he turned onto Fifth Avenue. This wasn’t, strictly speaking, on his way home, but it was close enough. His dear late sister had made him promise to keep the mansion just as it was, and Wainwright liked to give it a daily once over. Nobody lived there now, but his sister’s wealth was in trust to him and more than paid for a few servants to keep the vacant house in shape.

She hadn’t said why she wanted the mansion kept, that terrible winter when her health failed, but he knew. She still expected her son to return to her. When a thousand GI’s stepped onto the pier in New York harbor, Lamont Cranston had not been one of them.

Wainwright took another quick pull then tucked the silver flask away in his coat. It had been over seven years, and he had no illusions about the chances of an MIA soldier returning from the dead. Lamont had never been declared dead; Wainwright didn’t have the heart to make it official even if it might that he would gain the family fortune. Wainwright could have sold the white elephant of a house if he wanted to, but he had come to think of it as a memorial to his sister in the years since her death – larger and more magnificent than her tombstone, but somehow more eerily morbid than the cemetery. It was the sort of house ghost stories were written about.

The neighborhood children tended to agree, and he’d had to run off more than one miscreant attempting to scale the walls on a dare. Lately it had become a bit of a local tourist site – one of those lurid “Tales of the Unknown” magazines had picked up the family tragedy and painted it all over its yellow pages.

It wasn’t so surprising, then, that on this evening, as the gate finally came into sight, there was a man standing there, gazing into the courtyard.

Wainwright crossed the street briskly, eyeing the sightseer. A bit classier than the normal type, he was in a calf-length black overcoat and fedora that bespoke wealth. “Hey, you! Sir!” he called out, striding down the wide sidewalk.

The man didn’t acknowledge him, staring almost hypnotized at the house. “Sir, no loitering. This is private property.” Wainwright was beside him now; close enough to see that he didn’t even blink at being addressed. “Sir?” Wainwright spoke hesitantly, resting a hand lightly on the man’s shoulder.

The man finally turned, looking the commissioner full in the face. The eyes were the only thing Wainwright saw at first – eyes he saw in dreams for many nights after. Icy blue, as deceptively still as the eye of a hurricane, and in such pain. It drove the air from Wainwright’s chest, the sorrow in those un-crying eyes.

Wainwright found himself shaking, though he didn’t know why, and finally he saw who this man was. A little older, yes, and broader in the shoulders, but unmistakably his sister’s son. “Lamont?” The word was barely above a whisper.

Lamont’s brows drew together slightly though he did not speak. Wainwright felt inexplicably like he was in the presence of a shade, the insubstantial spirit of the newly dead awaiting passage across Styx into the Underworld.

To fight his sudden fear, he spoke quickly, “My God, boy! What happened? Where have you been the last seven years?”

Lamont finally tore his eyes away and Wainwright felt the prickle of goose bumps dissipate on his skin. Lamont shook his head, a tiny gesture, but enough to convince Wainwright that this was indeed a man, his nephew.

As police commissioner, Wainwright knew of the unspeakable cruelty man can show his fellow man. He could imagine the things that could happen to a soldier behind enemy lines, things that would keep him from coming home. And he knew this man before him had suffered. He was in shock, but he had finally come home.

Wainwright suddenly grabbed his nephew fiercely, needing to reassure himself as well as Lamont. “It’s all right. It’s all right. You don’t have to tell me. I’m just glad you’re here.”

Lamont allowed himself to be held for a moment before drawing away. He looked questioningly at his uncle, unable still to give voice to his thoughts.

“Don’t worry,” Wainwright said confidently. “It’s over, now. You’re home.”  



End file.
